


this feeling calls for everything that i am not

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: just let them REST alex [2]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Sad, Stream of Consciousness, Team as Family, Unfortunate Childhood Implications, Well - Freeform, even if it takes her a while to untangle all her feelings, found family foUND FAMILY FOUND FAMILY, im still trying to get sasha's voice right but we're getting there!!, less ''happy'' and more ''slightly less painful'', light references to violence/gore, nothing graphic, sasha!!! loves!!!!! her friends!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-15 00:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21024947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: sasha finds a family.





	this feeling calls for everything that i am not

**Author's Note:**

> listen listen listen listen lydia is such a good fucking role player guys, guys, like i dont remember the episode but like theres this one bit where sasha is talking about the group to someone else (mr ceiling?? maybe?) and she almost says she loves them/theyre her family but she stumbles over her words and eventually calls them, like, her colleagues or something who she doesnt hate and im. just. i JUST. *screams* i love sasha so gosh darn much

The thing- the thing is, is, Sasha hasn’t- Sasha doesn’t- Sasha knows what a Family is, okay? Sasha has a Family. Sasha is Rackett, Sasha knows her Family and it is full of men like Barrett and Rakefine and, well, not Brock, not really, but Brock was always different, didn’t count, but her Family is The Racketts and The Racketts are sharp, knife-sharp and word-sharp and before she met Zolf and Hamid and the others, when Sasha thought of Family she thought of The Family and about prisons and schools and rings and Barrett’s slimy voice in her head. The Family is a trap, a prison, a lock she can’t pick, and that is how it’s always been. 

But- the thing, the thing is, the _ thing- _ is that Family was never complicated, for Sasha, right, Family was The Family, but then- then. Then she _ escaped_, sort of, mostly, and sure she had one less finger and one more Bi Ming and relearning how to pick locks and disarm traps was a _ bitch _ but suddenly when Sasha thinks of Family she doesn’t just think about rings and fingers and prisons and hurt, but about old knives and gnomes and hugs and _ Gusset’s Antiques _ and that isn’t _ right_. Because Bi Ming and The Family aren’t the _ same_, so she makes it like a knife. She knows knives. The blade, short and sharp, Bi Ming on one side, _ Gusset’s Antiques _ and hugs and secret compartments and learning appraisal in back rooms on one side, and on the other is The Family. Racketts and territories and rings and poison-words, knife-sharp in her ear.

Sasha has a Family. And Sasha has a Bi Ming. And those things- are different. And for a while, that’s fine. Sasha isn’t just a gutter thief under Barrett’s thumb anymore, clinging to Brock with everything she has because he’s both Family and not, because they’re all each other have; she’s an _ antiques appraiser _ now, and Brock’s gone but she can climb up to the roof and drag Bi Ming along with her and he’ll grumble about his age and his joints but he’ll _ stay _, and they’ll watch the sky together, like she and Brock used to watch the Markets, and Sasha can drown out the twisty, fuzzy thoughts that sometimes threaten to overwhelm her. 

And then one day Sasha gets cornered in an alley by Barrett’s men, by the Family, and then there’s an obnoxious man and dwarf with one leg and they fight with her, _ for _ her, and she doesn’t need the help, she’s quite competent, thank you, but by the end of it the Rackett men are dead or down and the dwarf is asking for her name, and there’s a halfling at the mouth of the alleyway shouting at the crowd and Sasha fumbles through her words like usual and but somehow she joins a _ group_. 

Then, _ then_, they’re at an _ auction_, and she has pockets full of fancy people snacks and she’s appraising a _ very _ expensive automaton on the stage and then everything’s on fire and then they’re in the sewers and the dwarf- Zolf, her, boss? now?- is down a hole and it’s all very complicated. And things happen and she stumbles through more conversations and they fight plant monsters and she sees the sea and suddenly they’re in France and Sasha realizes that she has a Family and she has a _ family _ and that- that-

Sasha doesn’t know what to do with that, really, because at first there was The Family and then there was Sasha&Brock and The Family, and then there was Bi Ming, but it was never- it wasn’t, Bi Ming wasn’t her Family because when she thinks of Bi Ming she thinks about the smell of old wood polish and lots of shiny things and gnome hugs and when she thinks about her Family she hears Barrett’s voice in her head and where her finger used to be aches and they aren’t- they are- they’re _ different _ but now she knows that most people’s families aren’t like her Family, they’re like, like- well. She doesn’t know, but when Hamid talks about his family he gets this soft look on his face, like, and Zolf gets that sound in his voice like he’s just swallowed a rock, but not, like, bad? And Sasha thinks that maybe she doesn’t need a Family but a family and maybe, maybe she has one?

But families can be hurt, can hurt _ you_, but maybe it’s alright because if Zolf and Hamid are her family they’re aren’t like other families, or her Family, because Zolf has a trident and his spells and Hamid is squishy but his hands turn into claws and she’s seen him talk strangers into singing his praises and maybe- maybe she can give these people a bit of her heart, because they may not have knives to protect it but Hamid has spells and tricksy words and Zolf has a trident and a god, and maybe, it’ll be- fine. Good. Better.

And then they find Mr Ceiling. And _ I missed you Sasha. Why do I miss you? Sasha? Sasha? _ In a voice that is, isn’t, is Brock’s and Sasha can’t sleep and Brock got turned into a brain, Brock is a part of this, this, _ thing _ this big horrible thing and Sasha’s just a thief, okay, just a gutter thief from Other London and she never learned how normal families work and now her best friend, _ Brock&Sasha against the world_, is a ceiling robot that wants to take over the world and she needs to kill it, they need to kill it, and she _ will_, okay, she _ knows _ she can and she will but when it’s all said and done she sits on the roof with the gargoyles and stares at the sky all through the night and her hands shake just a little. 

They get to Prague and Zolf leaves. Mr Ceiling’s dead but still mucking with Zolf, in a way that Sasha doesn’t let herself think about, and she knows he needs to leave, and really she should’ve known, really, when has anyone she cares about ever bothered to stay with her, really, okay, it’s _ fine_, she’s _ fine_, but Zolf leaves and Hamid cries and Sasha stays awake all through the night, and she finds some gargoyles and a high roof and sits there and stares at the sky and doesn’t cry and her hands don’t shake and she’s _ fine_. 

She meets a goblin and an orc and they go to Cairo and Sasha finds herself loving them. Like she loves Hamid, and Zolf, in that way that she never loved her Family, and that way that makes her think about Bi Ming and polished wood and Brock and _ not-Brock_, and she knows it’s stupid, so _ stupid_, because now she knows how much it _ hurts _ when her family leaves but she can’t stop herself from loving them.

She and Grizzop scout ahead, sneak together, and when Grizzop and Azu start a fight with a whole bar for her she grumbles and grumbles and later, lies and bed and feels a little warm. She thinks about Grizzop on Azu on a camel, walking through Cairo calling her name and feels a little bit irritated but mostly warm and she finds herself trusting that the hurt might be worth it.

Sasha has a Family, but she also has a _ family _ and in it there’s a gnome and a ghost and a halfling and a dwarf and a goblin and an orc and they’re all weird and loud and different and most of them can’t sneak for _ anything _ but when they say her name she feels warm and when they fight, with her, around her, when they trust her to stab the enemies before they can hurt them, she feels sure and right and warm and thinks that she much prefers a family to a Family.

They’re in a cave, with a massacre around them and dragons below them, and Grizzop takes the spear out of her and into him, with his weird god-magic, and then they’re together, back to back, alone, two thousand years apart from the rest of her family, and Sasha isn’t religious, doesn’t pray, just holds her daggers steady and breathes in resolve, and there’s a _ thwip thwip thwip _ behind her from Grizzop’s bow, and then a _ shuck shuck shuck _ and Grizzop is falling to the ground, bright red eyes open wide, he’s still smiling triumphantly, and Sasha screams.

Sasha screams and then she blacks out again, and for one blissful second when she wakes up she wonders where Azu is before everything crashes right back down.

She takes Grizzop’s things but not his body- after death, the body is just a shell, he’d said, and while Sasha’s never thought about it so poetically, not her thing, poetry, she doesn’t feel bad leaving it behind. He wouldn’t care. He died doing what he believed in, and that- it’s not enough, right now, it hurts like a raw wound but a million times worse because Sasha grew up covered in raw wounds, and a member of her _ family _ is _ gone_, but she- she hopes it will be.

Eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> i dont know if i conveyed everything i wanted to with this or if it makes any sense at all but it was late at night and i was getting emo about sasha and how probably thinks about families and friendship and i just,,,,, lov my girl  
~the title is from stray italian greyhound by vienna teng


End file.
